Castoriadis
In 1975, Cornelius Castoriadis used the term in his book The Imaginary Institution of Society, maintaining that 'the imaginary of the society...creates for each historical period its singular way of living, seeing and making its own existence'. For Castoriadis, 'the central imaginary significations of a society...are the laces which tie a society together and the forms which define what, for a given society, is "real"'.
In similar fashion, Habermas wrote of 'the massive background of an intersubjectively shared lifeworld...lifeworld contexts that provided the backing of a massive background consensus'.
Read more about this topic: Imaginary (sociology)